The Forest of Baba Yaga
Jonathan Honey 1600602 The Forest of Baba Yaga The world has changed. Magic runs through the blood of man once again, gods and dragons walk the earth and roam the skies. Some revel in their new power, some want to avoid it. For those who wish to suppress their power, either in fear of that power or out of the desire to live a normal life, there are Disenchanters: specially developed drugs that restrict a human’s magical power. In Romania, the state medical services control the supply of Disenchanters. Demand for them, as well of the complexity of the creation process, has driven the price through the roof. For those that cannot afford the exorbitant prices, there is another way. Deep in the forest, there is a woman. A woman who lives in a run-down cottage on a pair gigantic chicken legs. They say she sometimes makes house calls, riding through the sky is a great mortar, paddling the air with an enormous pestle. Some people call her “Grandmother” but everyone has heard her other name: Baba Yaga. She lives deep in the depths of the dark Romanian woods. There’s no map, the only way I managed to piece together any manner of directions was by listening to the locals. When I asked them how to find her, the ones who didn’t get immediately cagey told me that the only way to find her was “to get lost in the woods. If she wants you to find her, you will.” they told me to step off the path and get lost in the woods. I almost thought they were deliberately trying to mislead me but I discovered a government report about a tactical operation into these woods. Apparently, the Romanian government was concerned about the number of gifted people receiving unregistered Disenchanters. They commissioned a covert military operation to enter the woods, find the person who was distributing the disenchanters. I couldn’t find anything in the report about whether or not they really believed that it was actually Baba Yaga in the woods, but they didn’t seem to believe there was anything supernatural going on. The tac team went into the forest, searched every inch of the place and found nothing. However, there was a series of injury reports attached to the end of the file. The final document was a note that simply said “The Baba Yaga case has been resolved. Military action in these forests has been restricted.” Honestly, this is what piqued my interest to write this in the first place. This report is what convinced me that there really is something in these woods. As outlandish as it sounds, even in this post re-enchantment world, I think that Baba Yaga decided to make her presence known as well as her wish to be left alone. I’ve heard the stories. If even a tenth of them are true then She will have been able to convince the government to leave her alone. After nearly a week of gathering scraps of stories and whispers of rumours, I set out into the forest. As per the stories the locals had told me, I ignored all signposts, any indication of a path was ignored and I was soon lost. Soon I was out of my depth, I stumbled around in the dark until I found myself in a clearing. I found her. An old woman hunched over a frankly colossal pewter cauldron. Behind her loomed a hut crouching on a pair of enormous scaly chicken legs. The old woman didn’t even look up from her cauldron. “Let’s get a look at you then.” After a moment of stunned amazement, I realised she was talking to me. I walked up to her and she gave me a long, hard look at me. I looked down into a wizened, gnarled face that seemed to be carved more out of wood than the face of a real person. She squinted at me, “Yer not after a Disenchanter,” her accent was thick, closer to Russian than the local dialect I had heard. I shook my head. “I came to learn.” She laughed. “Maybe I have opening for a student.” Mechanically speaking, the Forest of Baba Yaga will be a secret area that the player will have to pick up from NPC chatter and then from the discovery of the above document. The player will be able to meet the infamous witch and purchase secret items from her, as well as especially potent Disenchanters